The Breaking News
by Morning Lilies
Summary: Molly remembers the first time she heard about Harry Potter. As one family celebrates, another breaks. November 1, 1981. Nothing ever looks quite the same in hindsight.


**A/N: I wrote this in honor of the 30****th**** anniversary of James and Lily Potter's deaths. I've never written in first person quite like this before, so I hope it turned out okay. I just have always wondered what the Weasleys were doing the day Harry lost his first family. I hope you enjoy it! **

They've gone to Godric's Hollow tonight. Now that Harry has the freedom to do so, it seemed he couldn't stay away. And naturally, Ron and Hermione went with him. Most of their friends will be filling pubs, dressed in crazy costumes, letting off steam that has been building for months now, years even. And maybe they will join them later, but this evening is not a much needed relief for him, a holiday that can be enjoyed without the powerful pang of obvious absences weighing down the festivities so heavily. It is a somber anniversary for him alone, now. But they'll be there with him, as they always are, and we'll wait here as we always do, Arthur and me, waiting for our children to come home.

I can remember with painful clarity when I heard the news seventeen years ago. For the first decade afterwards it was a memory of jubilation and profound relief that blurred as other memories of intense emotions tend to do. But when my youngest son started Hogwarts and I met his best friend, that happy, blurred memory was steadily drawn into sharp vividness, recolored, and changed forever.

_November 1, 1981_.

It began with bangs and shrieks and flashing lights in the middle of the night. Arthur and I, having lived in utter terror of attack for nearly a decade, were out of bed in a second, wands drawn. We did not even think about what we were doing as we rolled into motion to defend, protect. Had I not been focused on reaching my children, I might have been thinking I now knew what it was like to have a heart attack. But halfway to the basinet at the foot of our bed, Arthur grabbed my arm.

He was pointing towards the bedroom window, gaping, and when I whirled round, I saw why. It was fireworks. Sparks were exploding across the sky in shimmering showers of the strangest colors I had ever seen, forming the images of cantering reindeer and technicolored fish and creatures I couldn't even identify far off in the hills.

"Must be the Lovegoods," Arthur mumbled, as we both processed the fact that we were not being attacked after all.

I kept watching the amazing pyrotechnics, letting that relief seep through me. It wasn't spells. It wasn't Death Eaters. It was just one of Mr. Lovegood's strange superstitions or Mrs. Lovegood's odd experiments. We were not in danger.

After a moment Arthur gave a weak chuckle. We looked at each other and I couldn't help but join in. Soon we were both doubled-up with muffled laughter if for no other reason than giddy relief. We had learned long ago from parenting, marriage, and war alike that grabbing hold of an opportunity to laugh now and then was essential to survival.

"Shsh," I tried to shush through my giggles, gesturing towards the basinet at the foot of our bed. "She's still asleep."

Amazingly, our nearly-three-month old daughter, who awoke to the lightest creak of the floorboards, seemed impervious to the loud explosions filling the sky.

Arthur shook his head, grinning to himself, then glanced at the clock. It was four-thirty in the morning.

"We might actually be able to go back to bed –"

The words had barely left his mouth when the sound of doors being flung open and pattering feet came from below, accompanied by the inescapable squeals of "Mummy! Daddy!"

Alas, with six other children in the house, it was far too much to hope that none of them would wake up.

The door was flung open and our five-year-old son threw himself at me, burying his face in my stomach. His older brothers filled the doorway behind him, looking scared. Bill at ten, nearly eleven, and Charlie at eight, nearly nine, understood much more about the evils of the world than their brothers, much more than I would have liked my children to know and fear.

"It's alright," I soothed from long practice. I smoothed Percy's bedhead and hoisted him into my arms, straightening his crooked glasses. "It's just fireworks."

The other two seemed to slump with relief. I figured they must have seen them through their bedroom windows, but, as so often was the case, they couldn't really relax until they heard it was alright straight from one of our mouths.

"What idiot's lighting off fireworks _now_?" Bill complained, slouching over to the end of our bed and staring tiredly down at his miraculously-still-sleeping baby sister.

"Language, Bill," Percy chastised, pulling his face out of my shoulder long enough to frown at his brother. "Mummy says not to call people that."

"If they're lighting off fireworks in the middle of a war, I'll call them whatever I want," Bill grumbled.

"It's just the Lovegoods being, er… eccentric," said Arthur, choosing his words carefully.

Bill and Charlie exchanged a brief glance, eyebrows raised.

Arthur yawned hugely. "Well, now that this is all straightened out, suppose we can get back to bed?"

"I'm sleeping in here," Percy announced, locking his fingers behind my neck. But the other two were more than willing to retreat back into their warm beds for another few hours.

We really had nearly made it back to bed, the boys already shuffling out the door, when a window-rattling boom rocked our already-rattley house. There was a beat of silence in which Arthur closed his eyes, and I knew what he was praying for. But it was fruitless. Simultaneously, loud shrieks from below and wails from above started up.

I watched with amusement, gently rocking Percy side to side in my arms, as Arthur visibly sagged with disappointment. The little ones were up, which meant no more sleep until we had corralled them back into bed tonight.

"I've got the twins," he sighed, already heading for the stairs.

I tried to slide Percy down to the floor so I could go upstairs and tend to Ron, our youngest son, but he wouldn't let me go. "I want to stay with you!" Percy wailed.

And this, finally, seemed to break the sound barrier for Ginny, who woke up with a loud, indignant cry, demanding my attention.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" I exclaimed in exasperation as Percy tightened his grip on me. Giving in, I hoisted him higher into my arms again. "Will you two please get your brother up and bring him downstairs for me?" I asked my reliable oldest sons.

They disappeared up the stairs, Bill grumbling about lost sleep and too many screaming kids.

XxX

Breakfast was loud. Fred and George, our three-year-olds, had seen the fireworks out their window and had, no surprises, been utterly transfixed by them. It would be several weeks before we could go a day without a reenactment of the event. Charlie was drumming on the table with his fork and spoon and Percy kept telling him to stop (shouting over the explosion noises the twins were making as they leapt off their chairs, pretending to be fireworks themselves). Ron was whining and wriggling around uncomfortably in his highchair, dressed in only the diaper that Bill had haphazardly fastened onto him amid a cloud of complaint and which I had not had the chance to fix yet. Bill was trying with increasing frustration to settle Ron down and keep him from slipping out of his chair, and Ginny, fully awake now and evidently starving, was squawking at the top of her lungs in the crook of my arm, tiny mouth fluttering like a baby bird's as I tried to get a bottle ready for her and start the boys' breakfast and Arthur's coffee all one-handed and at the same time keep my children in line.

In other words, a typical morning.

"Charlie, will you please stop that! Percy, there's no need to shout!" (I was both a hypocrite and a liar there.)

Luckily, Arthur arrived on the scene a moment later, dressed and ready for action. He scooped Ron out of his chair, relieving Bill of his babysitting duty, wrangled the twins into their seats and somehow persuaded them to stay there, jabbed his wand at the coffee pot to heat it up, and nimbly leaned around me to flick on the wireless.

Instead of the oldies usually playing at this early hour, though, a reporter's voice spilled out, jumping with a surprising amount of emotion "... have seen the end of this war at last! You-Know-Who finally seems to have disappeared!"

There was a loud crash as the kettle slipped between my numb fingers. Arthur whipped around, Ron slipping sideways in his grip. The twins erupted at the loud noise, but Bill and Charley each longed forward to put hands over their mouths, both staring at the wireless with wide eyes.

"Reports that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named vanished late last night are flying around the country. His followers are disbanding, victims of the Imperious curse have been released!"

I brought my baby girl up close to my chest, pressing a kiss to the top of her tiny head, hardly daring to believe what the reporter on the radio was practically singing out, wild excitement filling every syllable. My eyes met with Arthur's and I saw the same stunned disbelief mirrored there. He held a wriggling Ron under one arm like a football, gripping the counter with the other hand. How could eleven years of war be over in a few seconds?

"Mum? Dad?" Charlie asked uncertainly, but I pressed a finger to my lips, listening hard.

"The details of his disappearance are not yet confirmed by the Ministry, but he was last sighted in Godric's Hollow, where, allegedly, there was an explosion. Casualties have been removed from the premises and evidence of You-Know-Who's defeat clearly found! This is the end, everybody! He's finally gone! Rejoice! Celebrate in the streets for we have nothing to fear anymore! You-Know-Who has gone…"

"Arthur!" I cried, my voice strangely weak.  
"I know, I know," he gasped, pulling Ron upright on his hip and reaching out to take me and Ginny into his other arm.

"Mum?" Charlie asked again form the table and this time I found a smile for him.

"Yes, baby?"

"Is he gone? Is he really gone?"

"Merlin, he'd better be."

I was surprised to feel my cheeks were wet. Arthur pressed his lips against my hair and I could feel our two babies squirming between us. Ronnie's little fingers touched the tears staining my cheeks and he began to wail anew.

"Shh, shh, It's alright, love," I murmured, catching hold of his hand and bringing it to my lips. "Everything's going to be alright, now."

XxX

The owls started pouring in from everyone we knew, holding a hurried version of what we had heard on the wireless, varying only in a few stray facts. The Lovegoods weren't the only ones lighting off fireworks or sending up sparks. The boys, caught up in the jubilation, ran about the yard, shouting and throwing magical sparklers that fizzled out high above their heads. And I let them because there was no looming shadows, no threat of attack.

All the radio stations were saying the same thing. Minister Bagnold herself had confirmed the rumors of the end of the war. It was a holiday. Arthur didn't have to go into work, and soon his brothers had shown up on our doorstep with their own frenzied sons and ecstatic wives.

We exchanged breathless bits of information from what we'd heard or read, broke open bottles of campaign and toasted this new world, growing more and more confident in it as the day wore on. My sisters-in-law and I set to cooking everything we had in the house, spreading a feast out on the table. The day blurred by with our friends and neighbors dropping in to make sure we'd heard the news, with laughter more wild and unweighed-down than it had been in eleven long years, with tears of joy and hope and relief, as well as loss and sorrow for we had not let ourselves grieve, not when more tragedy might be right around the corner.

My children would not grow up in this world of terror. I would not send them off to school and wonder if they would come home. I would not worry that they would get caught up in this fight, too and be consumed by it like my brothers had been. Their futures were free and clear and shined brighter than ever they had before.

And at the same time, by brothers were not here to see this. Gideon and Fabian had fought so hard for this day, had given their lives for it, and they would never see it. They had been consumed in the inferno of the last eleven years, their lives the cost of our safety and freedom. But I thought I could see them here, see them in the faces of my sons, hear them in the laughter and song that rang out all around us.

It was not until that evening that we heard the entire story – the real story – for the first time. Arthur's oldest brother, Bilius, stumbled in around sunset, just as the kids had grown exhausted enough to sprawl before the fire in the sitting room, the little ones fast asleep in piles like little puppies.

"How 'bout it," Bilius slurred from his place between two of his brothers. "Y'know 'oo gone at las'. Stopped by a li'le baby…"

Bilius was rather drunk, which wasn't much of a surprise, and we were only half-listening to him, still caught up in the daze of our newly liberated futures.

""Wha' 'e wanted t' kill the li'le thin' for, I'll never know, bu' it done 'im in good…"

"What ya mumbling about, Bilius?" one of his brothers asked genially, reaching for another glass whiskey. We would all be in a state like Bilius soon if we weren't careful.

"How the mos' evil wizard tha's walked the earth got bested by a baby," Bilius said earnestly, focusing on his brother with some difficulty.

A few of us exchanged grins. Bilius must be even more far-gone than we'd thought.

"Ha'n't ya heard?" he asked, looking around at our humoring smiles and furrowing his eyebrows in consternation. "Ha'n't ya heard abou' it?"

"Heard about what?" Arthur asked, mildly curious.

"About what? Abou't what stopped 'im!" Bilius exclaimed, slapping a hand against the table in exasperation.

We glanced at each other again. We'd heard a few rumors throughout the day, but none of us had wondered much beyond the snippets we'd heard. Surely Dumbledore or members of the Order had won the great victory we'd been hoping for for so long.

"It was an explosion, Bilius," one of my sisters-in-law said tentatively. "Just an explosion in Godric's Hollow. Probably after some big fight. It couldn't have been a baby." She laughed nervously, looking around at the rest of us.

But Bilius only looked more exasperated. He leaned in, planting his elbows on the table and peered into each of our faces. "You mean you've been celebrating and not even known _why_?" he asked, his slur somehow melting away.

There were two things I knew about Arthur's oldest brother: he could hold his licker good, and he could act drunk even better.

Bilius shook his head at our blank stares. "You'll want to hear this, then. Beats me how the lot of you avoided it all day, but there you go…. More amazing than You-Know-Who being gone, really…."

"What happened?" Arthur asked, urgency creeping into his voice now that we could tell Bilius was in his right mind.

His oldest brother sat back in his chair and looked around at all our attentive faces one more time before he started in on the story – the story that every witch and wizard would know by the end of that day. The story that I'd know far too personally, but not for another decade at least.

"Well, rumor has it he wasn't just passing through Godric's Hollow for the scenery," Bilius started. "I got it from some of them Order folks that he went there looking for the Potters. Guess they were pretty thick with Dumbledore. Right in with the Order and all that."

"Yes, my brothers talked about them, I think," I found myself whispering, recalling an old and forgotten conversation. One of the last before Gideon and Fabian had gone forever. The Potters had been a few years behind my brothers in school, eloped just like Arthur and I had. That was how their names came up.

"Yeah," Bilius nodded. "They woulda known 'em. Guess they were hotshots in Dumbledore's inner circle. Must've been, to get You-Know-Who's attention like they did."

I suddenly registered the past-tense Bilius used to speak about the Potters and realized where this was going. The familiar pang of hearing tragedy on the edges of your social circle – about people you know only just a little bit more about than total strangers – struck in my stomach, but I kept quiet, listening as Bilius kept going.

"Guess he'd been hunting 'em down for over a year. Had a spy. One of the Potters' good friends. Turns out he was a raving psychopath just like You-Know-Who, but that'll be in the papers tomorrow I reckon. Anyway, so this spy let slip where the Potters were and You-Know-Who went after them himself last night.

"And he got 'em, too," Bilius said gravely.

I had been expecting it, we all had, but we bowed our heads anyway.  
"But what's this about a baby?" my sister-in-law asked in a hushed voice.

"Well, that's the really crazy part," Bilius said and he was dead serious now. "Turns out the Potters had a little kid, a baby boy. I dunno why he did it – I mean he got what he came for. He coulda just left the kid there to starve. But maybe he just got caught up in the killing and couldn't help but turn his wand on him."

"The baby?" my sister-in-law squeaked, hands flying to her mouth. I felt sick, too. Adults were terrible enough, but I was always horrified by news of children paying the price of this war.

Bilius nodded. There was an almost feverish glint in his eyes as he rushed to tell the rest of the story. "But it didn't work. Curse bounced right off the kid. Back at You-Know-Who."

"What?" Arthur gaped, a feeling obviously shared by the rest of us gathered around the table.  
"You heard me, Artie," Bilius said earnestly. "The curse didn't work. It rebounded. Blew apart the house and caught You-Know-Who. And little Harry Potter _lived_. He got hit with a killing curse from You-Know-Who himself and _lived_."

I shook my head, disbelieving, wondering if Bilius really was drunk out of his mind.

"There's no blocking that curse," I whispered. "There's no way…."

"I dunno how it happened. No one does. 'Cept maybe Dumbledore and good luck getting it outta him," Bilius said, looking right at me.

"Are – are you sure?" one of Arthur's brothers asked.

We all jumped as Bilius slammed his hand down on the table again. "Of course I'm sure, Rupert! Think I'd go spreading something as lunatic as that without proof? Got it straight from Aberforth Dumbledore, and he knows things."

No one raised objections after that. Aberforth was the bartender in the Hog's Head, not the most reputable place, nor person for that matter. But Bilius (who spent at least a few nights a week hanging around the bar, drunk or not) wouldn't hear a word against him. And he was Dumbledore's brother, after all. He must know things.

The story cast a more sober tone to our gathering, and it wasn't long afterwards that sleepy children were gathered up and Arthur's family headed home, heads spinning with the miraculous tale. I had quite forgotten about Lily and James Potter. I didn't even know their names yet, actually. I didn't think, as I gathered my own boys up, carrying sleeping child after sleeping child up to their beds, about what would happen to the baby now, or about what our salvation would mean for him.

I was too busy being grateful for my own family and our future, and what thoughts I spared for the innocent child who turned out to be at the center of this were mostly those of awe and wonderment.

But before I could slide into my own bed, before I could enjoy the first really peaceful night of sleep I had gotten in eleven years, I crept up to my own baby boy's bedroom. He was curled in his cot, fast asleep where Arthur had tucked him. I scooped him up and Ron curled against my chest, sighing softly in his sleep.

I tried to imagine him deflecting a lethal curse and shuddered at the thought. As I gently nested Ron back in his blankets, a shooting star shot across the sky. _For Harry Potter,_ I thought. _The boy who lived. _

A week later, my five-year-old would find a rat in our garden. He would beg and cry until I let him nurse it back to health and keep it as a pet. Ten years later, I would take my children to Kings Cross station and come across a small, too-skinny boy with messy black hair and bright green eyes. I wouldn't notice his scar, just his lonely look. The twins would have to tell me that it was this boy who I had wished on a star for all those years ago for saving my family and then nearly forgot about.

And now, seven years after that, here I am, waiting for him to come home. Here I am thinking about what I didn't think about seventeen years ago.

He isn't the only one acknowledging today as sad anniversary after all. Not anymore.

**A/N: So… what did you think? Pleas, please, please review! I love your thoughts. It just takes a second and I know you have some. It would mean so much to me if you shared them with me :) **


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